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A review by daumari
Last Boat Out of Shanghai: The Epic Story of the Chinese Who Fled Mao's Revolution by Helen Zia
5.0
This book is stunning, and is yet another I will likely send to my dad to read, as it combines his interest in military history but also our shared fascination with the history of the Chinese diaspora. To listen to an interview with the author, check out this live episode of They Call Us Bruce.
I was initially surprised to find that it was a narrative read, following four individuals from childhood through their diaspora adventures. Even more surprising, these are *true* narratives, collected over many interviews through the course of 12 years (in addition to over one hundred interviews with other Shanghainese immigrants). Nonfiction can get very dry, citing reports and contemporary news articles without personifying things, but this was a gripping tale. My family are Taishanese folks, but the stories here are adjacent to my family's, with an uncle remembering Japanese atrocities in the ancestral village during WWII, and his wife being a refugee yet also a "sophisticated city girl" to his self-described "country bumpkin".
Last Boat Out of Shanghai covers the mostly untold story of the exodus of millions out of Shanghai around the Communist takeover of the city in 1949. Zia mentions the perception that the people who fled Mao's revolution were the landowners, the bourgeosie, the rich and intellectual, but the Japanese occupation and the following civil war disrupted life for all classes. Annuo and Bing's stories consistently are about staving off poverty (both girls also leave and return to Shanghai various times during this period too), Benny goes from a spoiled son of a corrupt police official to struggling to find a way to finish his education, while Ho is trapped in limbo, a student overseas trying to figure out if he should go home to find his family or find a way to stay in a country that doesn't want him.
Though a historical, biographical narrative, it's not hard to draw comparisons to modern day discussions about refugees displaced on the globe. Zia digs in her acknowledgements that even at the height of Cold War and McCarthyism paranoia, the US government didn't want to separate parents from their children. The stress of having enough money to enter another country, having the right papers, making sure your family is all covered (or do you divide members in case the safe haven't isn't that safe?) are still questions people need to consider when thinking about fleeing home.
I was initially surprised to find that it was a narrative read, following four individuals from childhood through their diaspora adventures. Even more surprising, these are *true* narratives, collected over many interviews through the course of 12 years (in addition to over one hundred interviews with other Shanghainese immigrants). Nonfiction can get very dry, citing reports and contemporary news articles without personifying things, but this was a gripping tale. My family are Taishanese folks, but the stories here are adjacent to my family's, with an uncle remembering Japanese atrocities in the ancestral village during WWII, and his wife being a refugee yet also a "sophisticated city girl" to his self-described "country bumpkin".
Last Boat Out of Shanghai covers the mostly untold story of the exodus of millions out of Shanghai around the Communist takeover of the city in 1949. Zia mentions the perception that the people who fled Mao's revolution were the landowners, the bourgeosie, the rich and intellectual, but the Japanese occupation and the following civil war disrupted life for all classes. Annuo and Bing's stories consistently are about staving off poverty (both girls also leave and return to Shanghai various times during this period too), Benny goes from a spoiled son of a corrupt police official to struggling to find a way to finish his education, while Ho is trapped in limbo, a student overseas trying to figure out if he should go home to find his family or find a way to stay in a country that doesn't want him.
Though a historical, biographical narrative, it's not hard to draw comparisons to modern day discussions about refugees displaced on the globe. Zia digs in her acknowledgements that even at the height of Cold War and McCarthyism paranoia, the US government didn't want to separate parents from their children. The stress of having enough money to enter another country, having the right papers, making sure your family is all covered (or do you divide members in case the safe haven't isn't that safe?) are still questions people need to consider when thinking about fleeing home.